Among the most significant shifts happening in healthcare today is the attitude of people towards their health. People are starting to be more involved and engaged in their physical well-being.

Patients and consumers are seeking better quality of service, timely care, transparency in information, and optimal use of communication devices and technology – “conveniences” they enjoy in other industries. 

To accommodate the growing need for patient-centered strategies and to boost patient engagement, healthcare providers have started creating various programs and utilizing different patient portal tools. Hospitals and health systems are leveraging innovative strategies and technologies to enable the best patient outcomes possible. 

Among the most used technology to advance patient engagement are information technology (IT) via smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers.

Facing the common pitfalls of patient engagement

While it is true that IT can potentially advance patient engagement, most platforms or solutions have failed to engage patients effectively for sustained participation. 

Why? There could be many reasons. 

One reason that I see is the lack of connectivity and interoperability among the various solutions. Though there are plenty of tools and solutions, there is no integration between the different platforms. These components have remained siloed, adding more burden to providers.

Another reason is that patients do not have user-friendly solutions that meet their needs. Many patient engagement tools are clunky, difficult to navigate, and lack effective design to actually engage patients and be useful. In other consumer-facing industries, user experience is an essential component to product conception and development, however, the same level of importance to design is seriously missing in patient engagement tools. Furthermore, many solutions are not mobile-first, or even available as a client-branded mobile app.  

Consumers also expect some level of personalization in the digital touchpoints they have with organizations, which spurs engagement. Many patient portal tools on the market don’t deliver the degree of personalization needed to drive meaningful engagement. Examples of the types of customization that could be leveraged include personalized messages and patient education materials based on condition, last visit, medical history, etc.; streamlined communications across all digital touchpoints based on patient communication preferences for medium (e.g., SMS, push notifications, email, etc.) and frequency; and patient surveys that can impact personalization not only online, but during in-person visits. 

These are just some of the pitfalls hospitals and health care companies face when it comes to patient engagement. 

Offering an “all-in-one” patient engagement platform for healthcare

Recently, I learned of a company that offers a streamlined patient engagement space, one that offers solutions to the various pitfalls of embracing patient engagement. 

Bridge Patient Portal is an enterprise patient portal and patient engagement solution for healthcare organizations. It’s all-in-one patient engagement platform works with any interfaceable EHR, RCM, PM, HIE, and RIS system!

The platform is packed with robust functionality you need in a patient engagement platform such as the following:

• Online bill pay 

• Appointment reminders

• Self-scheduling

• Patient-provider messaging

• Patient intake software

I had the opportunity to interview John Deutsch, CEO of Bridge Patient Portal, and this is what he said about his company’s product. 

“When we look at our solution, we try to look at it very holistically, which is different from a lot of the other vendors that are out there that are kind of just taking little bits and pieces of different patient engagement needs and sort of one-off solutions. We are focused on looking at the broader problem.”

For John, one of the key features of this Bridge platform is it eliminates the silo created by the different solutions and ties them all up in one platform. This company’s holistic view of the problem has helped in creating a solution that solves many of the challenges of patient engagement. 

The platform is mobile-responsive and can be downloaded in both iOS and Android and offers multilingual support. 

Enabling the best patient outcomes

Bridge Patient Portal has ticked all the boxes of how to get better patient engagement. With this company’s help, we can expect to see better efficiency in the health care system.

Find out how Bridge Patient Portal can scale your service and improve your patient strategies. 

Click here to listen to my full conversation with John: https://outcomesrocket.health/bridge-patient-portal/2020/07/